This exhibition explores the work, selected from the 1960s to today, of fifteen contemporary artists who either use line in creative and challenging ways or in whose finished work line has become a prominent element.

The simple act of extending a point, predominantly by drawing with pen or pencil on paper, has paradoxically made line one of the most powerful forms of artistic expression in the history of mankind, yet over time it has taken on different meanings and uses relative to the era of its creation. Continuous or broken, curved or straight, free-floating or geometric, line can define boundaries, divide surfaces, create light and shade, and be used for communication.

Once considered to be pure and linear, as seen for instance in the works of Minimalist artists Fred Sandback and Anne Truitt in this exhibition, line has in recent years acquired a more complex magnitude and extravagant nature. Fine exemplars of this are the elaborate installations by the younger artists, Hemali Bhuta, Adrian Esparza and Conrad Shawcross.

The Lines of Thought exhibition brings together a number of disparate works that prompt thoughts about how the simplicity of line is the core element of so many and often unpredictable forms of artistic expression.